So was Laera. She was squirming underneath him, wrapping her legs around him to prevent his escape. “Laera, please, I beg of you!” he whispered frantically into her ear.
“Make love to me,” she whispered back, a wild look in her eyes. “Make love to me right now or else I’ll scream!”
“No!” he whispered harshly. “Laera, this is insane—”
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to scream. He hastily covered her mouth with his own and she chuckled deep down in her throat.
“Aedan! Aedan, I’m going! I’m not waiting any longer!” Michael called out.
Neither was Laera. She was breathing heavily, moaning as she moved beneath him. Aedan did not see how Michael could possibly fail to hear. Panic-stricken, he covered her mouth with his hand, looking over his shoulder and expecting Michael to open the stall door at any second. In his anxiety, he failed to notice that he had covered not only Laera’s mouth, but her nose, as well.
Unable to breathe, she struggled to remove his hand, but he held her down with determination, pinning one arm with his free hand and the other with his knee as he watched to see where Michael was. Laera bucked and thrashed beneath him, but Aedan cursed her silently as he looked over his shoulder and gritted his teeth, watching the stall partition.
He heard footsteps, then the clip-clopping of hooves as Michael took his horse out of its stall. Pressing down on Laera in an attempt to keep her still, he continued to watch the stall door, holding his breath and listening. He heard Michael’s horse snort and wicker just outside the stable doors. Then came the soft creak of the stirrups as the boy mounted up and hoofbeats as he trotted off.
Aedan closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of relief. However, he wasn’t safe yet. The grooms could return at any moment. He had to get Laera dressed and out of here. “Laera—”
She had stopped her struggles and lay still beneath him, her eyes closed.
“Laera?”
With a shock, he suddenly noticed that he had been covering both her mouth and nose. He jerked his hand away.
“Laera!”
She gasped for air, reflexively, and Aedan almost sobbed with relief. For a dreadful moment, he had thought he might have killed her. Her eyes fluttered open, and she coughed, gasping for air.
“Laera! Laera, forgive me! I didn’t realize—”
His head jerked as she slapped him hard across the face. “You bastard! I couldn’t breathe!”
“Laera, I’m sorry, I—”
“You might have killed me, you miserable wretch!” she said, shoving him away and getting to her feet unsteadily. He tried to help her, but she pushed him back again and he fell onto the straw. She stood over him, naked, her eyes blazing with fury “How dare you! I ought to have you whipped!”
“Laera, lower your voice, for mercy’s sake!” he said, pulling up his breeches and brushing off the straw. “The grooms—”
“The grooms! The grooms! It would serve you right to have the grooms come in here and find us like this! What do you suppose they’d think?”
He got to his feet. “And just what would you have them think?” he asked with an edge to his voice. Even as he spoke, he realized that suddenly everything had changed.
“I could tell them that you’d lured me to the stables and then choked me so you could remove my clothes and have your way with me!” she said spitefully. “And then what would you do? What do you think Lord Arwyn would do when he found out?”
“He might find out considerably more than you intended,” Aedan countered angrily.
“Oh, and do you really think that he would take your word over mine?” she asked contemptuously.
“No, I rather doubt he would,” said Aedan. “But he might take the word of the house guards, who saw you leave your room each night for the past few weeks and come to mine.”
“They never saw where I was going!” she said, but a look of uncertainty came into her eyes. For the first time, she seemed to realize she was no longer completely in control.
“Didn’t they?” Aedan said. He shrugged. “Well, perhaps not. Perhaps one of them didn’t follow you to see where you went each night. Perhaps he never saw you go into my room. Perhaps there is some other reason why they all wink at me and smile each time I pass them in the corridors.”
“Even so,” she said, “they are the Royal House Guard, and their first loyalty will be to me, the princess, and not the lowly chamberlain’s son!” She tried to say this with conviction, but a note of doubt crept through.
“The lowly chamberlain,” said Aedan, echoing her words with heavy sarcasm, “is the man who has always seen to it that they were paid on time and well, and who has made certain their families were properly provided for, and given comfortable quarters and the care of court physicians whenever they were ill. It is just possible that they might also feel some loyalty toward him, and not wish to see his son falsely branded as a rapist when the truth is that the princess is a wanton slut.”
She stared at him with shock, then struck him across the face with all her might. He saw it coming, but he took the blow, not even trying to avoid it. “You insolent pig!” she said, spitting out the words. “You’ll pay for that! And to think I gave myself to you!”
“Indeed,” said Aedan, wryly. “It was a gift I never asked for and was a fool to have accepted in the first place, considering its questionable worth.”
With a cry of rage, she launched herself at him, arms raised, fingers hooked like talons, ready to claw his eyes out. He caught her by the wrists and pivoted, using her own momentum to throw her down. She fell, sprawling, into the straw.
“Enough!” he said. “By all the gods, enough! Whether in anger or in lust, you have laid hands on me for the last time! Now get up and put your clothes back on! You are still a princess of the royal house, so try to act like one! And henceforth, I shall try to act as befits my proper place and station, which I had forgotten, like a fool. As for the rest of it—your threats, your wounded pride—do what you wish. Whatever it may cost me, I am past caring one way or the other.”
Aedan turned and left the stall, leaving her lying there with an incredulous look on her face. He crossed the aisle and took his horse out of its stall. Michael already had a good head start, and he had to catch up to him. It was not safe for the prince to be out riding alone, and it was past time he started thinking once again about his duties and responsibilities—for however long they would remain his duties and responsibilities. Perhaps only until this afternoon. It would not surprise him if he were seized by Arwyn’s men-at-arms the moment he returned. He didn’t care. He felt, at least for the moment, marvelously free.
Laera’s words had been like a bucketful of cold water dashed into his face. Whatever spell he had been under was finally broken, and he saw her for the selfish, spiteful, spoiled girl she really was … and himself for an utter fool. One way or another, however things turned out, at least it was finally over and he could try to regain, if at all possible, some vague semblance of his self-respect.
He truly didn’t care about what would happen to him now, except for how it would affect his parents. His disgrace would become theirs, as well, and for their sake, he hoped Laera had enough wits about her to leave well enough alone. Perhaps he had convinced her she would not come away unscathed if she made any accusations against him, that if she chose to reveal their affair or claim he had forced himself upon her, it would be her disgrace, as well. Perhaps it would not be very chivalrous of him to reveal a lady’s indiscretions, even in self-defense, but neither was it very ladylike for a woman to salvage her own questionable virtue by accusing her chosen lover of rape. Either way, he knew Laera would not forget or forgive. He had made an enemy for life. And it was his own fault for becoming involved with her in the first place.